Yesterday, I turned 24, rather unceremoniously. Usually, I make a big fuss of my birthday – I drag it out for as long as possible, believing as I do that you should never waste a good excuse to indulge in all your favorite foods and coerce all your favorite people into spending time with you. But this year, given all the chaos in our city right now, it felt different. I still celebrated – last Saturday I had a fun and happy party, Trevor and I have a nice dinner planned, and tomorrow I’ll be joining my parents for steak tips and strawberry shortcake. But, like everyone else in the city, if not the whole country, my attention was elsewhere. How could a birthday be important when people around you are having their hearts broken? It feels selfish and trivial to think too much about myself this week.

Still, I made this birthday cake. I had made the components ahead of time – my favorite vanilla cake recipe, made with coconut milk, lemon cream cheese and mascarpone frosting, and a lemon curd filling – but I assembled it late Monday afternoon, as a distraction from the news (or really, the lack of news) streaming in from the TV. I brought slices to work, to comfort myself after the unsettling experience of riding a train protected by stoic National Guardsmen and slipping through barricades to get into the office. I ate a slice this morning, my nerves shaken and tears threatening as I absorbed everything that happened overnight. And so it became a cake tinged with sadness. A cake turned to from need of distraction and comfort. All week, the phrase “the particular sadness of lemon cake” has been drifting through my head (from the title of this book). I didn’t set out to make a cake that would fit that description, it just happened.

Hopefully this will all be over soon, and we will be able to grieve for the victims without feeling a small but constant fear.  There are many families that have been changed forever, for whom sadness will be a constant, but we will do our best to love and comfort them. We will let the spring soothe us and our smiles will become broader. People will eat birthday cake with no sadness whatsoever.

P.S. Birthday recipes from last year, for a more jovial tone – Tequila and Lime Steak Tacos and the obligatory Birthday Waffles

Triple Lemon Cake with Lemon-Mascarpone-Cream Cheese Frosting

Cake recipe adapted from 6 Bittersweets. Lemon curd recipe from David Leibowitz. Serves 12-16.

For the cake:

• 1 1/2 sticks (3/4 c.) salted butter, softened
• 1 1/4 c. sugar
• 3 eggs, room temperature
• 2 1/4 c. AP flour
• 1 tsp baking powder
• 1 c. canned coconut milk (shake well before opening)
• 1 tsp vanilla extract
• 1/2 tsp lemon extract (optional)

1. Preheat the oven to 350°F. Line two 8-inch cake pans with parchment paper, or grease well. Set aside.
2. In a large bowl, beat the softened butter until creamy. Add the sugar and beat vigorously until light and fluffy. Add the eggs one at a time, beating thoroughly between each addition. Batter should be pale yellow and thick.
3. In a separate bowl, whisk together the flour and baking powder. Add half of the flour mixture to the batter, and stir until just incorporated. Add the coconut milk, and stir until just incorporated. Add the second half of the flour mixture, and stir, again, just until incorporated. Overbeating the batter will lead to a tough cake. Stir in the vanilla and lemon extracts, if using.
4. Pour half of the batter into each of the two prepared pans. Bake in the preheated oven for 35-45 minutes, until the cakes are light golden brown on top and spring back when touched. A toothpick inserted into the center of the cakes should come out clean. Let cakes cool for 5 minutes in the pans on a cooling rack, then run a knife around the edges of the cake to loosen and invert onto a cooling rack. Let cool completely before assembling.

For the lemon curd:

• 1/2 c. lemon juice, preferably freshly squeezed
• 1/2 c. sugar
• 2 large egg yolks
• 2 large eggs
• 1/4 tsp salt
• 3 TBS unsalted butter, cut into cubes

1. Place a mesh strainer over a medium heatproof bowl, and set aside.
2. In a medium saucepan, whisk together lemon juice, sugar, egg yolks, eggs, and salt until thoroughly combined. Add the butter pieces and heat over low heat, whisking constantly. Once the butter has all melted, raise the heat to medium-low, and continue to cook, still whisking constantly, until the curd has thickened to a pudding-like consistency. Immediately remove from heat and pour through strainer into the bowl.
3. Cover with plastic wrap, pressing plastic against the curd to keep a skin from forming, and refrigerate until fully chilled.

For the frosting:

• 8 oz. mascarpone cheese, room temperature
• 8 oz. cream cheese, room temperature
• 3-4 cups powdered sugar
• 1/2 tsp lemon extract
• 1 TBS fresh lemon juice

1. Beat together the mascarpone and cream cheeses until there are no lumps. Add the powdered sugar 1 cup at a time, beating vigorously between additions, until the frosting is stiff (you may not use all 4 cups). Add the lemon extract and lemon juice and beat to incorporate. Taste for flavor, consistency, and sweetness, and adjust lemon juice and/or sugar amounts according to taste.

To assemble:

1. Dab a bit of the frosting on a cake plate. Place your bottom, cooled layer of cake on top of the cake plate and press down to stick. Spoon a generous layer of lemon curd on top of the cake and spread with a spatula. The layer of lemon curd should be about 1/3 inch thick all around the cake – you may not use all of the lemon curd. Gently place the second cake layer on top of the lemon curd. Press down lightly, and wipe any lemon curd that oozes out off the side of the cake. Frost the cake, using a crumb coat if you want the cake to be extra neat.
2. Refrigerate until ready to serve. Serve cold or at room temperature, with an extra dollop of lemon curd or fresh strawberries.

The post A Birthday, with Sadness // A Lemon Cake appeared first on Katie at the Kitchen Door.

Update: The giveaway is now closed. Congrats to Amy of U Try.It on winning! And thank you everyone for sharing your perfect Valentine’s Day dreams… so fun to read.

If you live in Somerville, MA, you’ve almost definitely heard of Taza Chocolate.  If you live elsewhere in Greater Boston and have ever gone to any event remotely food-related, you’ve probably heard of Taza Chocolate.  But if you’re further afield, you may never have had the delicious experience of eating their stone-ground Mexican chocolate, and so I’m here to share the love, because I really do love Taza’s chocolate.  It’s different – gritty, not super sweet, and infused with flavors like chipotle and cinnamon and orange – but it’s addicting.  Trevor introduced me to it a few years ago and I’ve gotten more and more excited about it ever since.  Visiting the Taza factory in Somerville has been high on my “to-do in Boston” list since I moved back, and when I finally got around to it (which, admittedly was kind of a while ago at this point…), it was well worth the trip.

I’ve been on a decent amount of food tours – to breweries, cheesemakers, cider houses, farms, and restaurant kitchens – and they can definitely be hit or miss.  The Magic Hat Brewery Tour was a disappointment and I learned very little.  Visiting Prodigal Farm in North Carolina was truly fascinating (you can read more about it here).  The Taza tour was way up on my quality scale – honestly, it was one of the most interesting and informative tours I’ve ever been on, and I’m not just saying that because there was a constant supply of chocolate samples during the tour.  It probably helped that I knew very little about the chocolate making process to start.  Did you know how huge cocoa pods are?  Or that they grow straight from the trunk of the tree?  Or that they turn beautiful colors in the fall?  Just the images of the cocoa trees themselves fascinated me.  Then we moved onto the harvesting, shipping, roasting, winnowing, and grinding processes, and every piece of information was new and exciting.  I don’t want to give away their whole tour, in case some of you would like to actually hear it from the Taza people themselves rather than in an overly-excited and garbled form from me, but I will share some of the highlights.  Like that one of the co-founders of Taza spent a year in Oaxaca learning to properly dress the traditional millstones used to grind the chocolate.  Or that their winnowing machine is an old Italian giant they found on a cocoa sourcing trip.  Or that they travel to the countries from which their cocoa beans come every year to pick the best quality beans and make sure the farms they come from are fair.  Or that the difference between European and Mexican chocolate is the addition of milk and a thorough mixing process to smooth it out.

I highly recommend a trip to the factory if you live in the area or are ever visiting. And if you’re really looking for the full chocolate experience, Taza offers a week-long trip to Belize every March in which you go through the entire process of making chocolate, from picking cocoa beans to making your own bars (sometimes I really wish I was richer). If a quick jaunt to make chocolate in the jungle isn’t in the cards for you this year, either, I have two other things you might enjoy – one, a delicious chocolate mousse recipe, and two, a Taza chocolate giveaway.

Typically I just eat Taza chocolate straight – my favorite flavors are the salt & pepper and the cinnamon – but since we’re getting close to Valentine’s Day, I thought I’d step my game up and make a Mayan Chocolate Mousse, inspired in equal parts by Food & Wine’s Mayan Chocolate Pudding, and Bon Appetit’s recent article on the perfect chocolate mousse. I went all out with the cinnamon, using two packs of Taza cinnamon chocolate discs, replacing the espresso with my favorite cinnamon tea, and topping it off with a sweetened cinnamon whipped cream. It came out amazing, if I do say so myself. I really loved that the mousse still held the essence of Taza chocolate, it didn’t just taste generically chocolatey. I don’t know if I’ll even be able to wait until the 14th before making it again…

Giveaway Details: Interested in trying Taza chocolate? Enter to win the Chocolate Mexicano Classic Collection, and you can try six of their flavors (a cinnamon disc is included, leaving you just enough to make a portion of this mousse for two…). To enter, leave a comment below telling me how you would spend your ideal Valentine’s Day if money wasn’t an option. For a second entry, follow both me (@Kitchen_Door) and Taza (@TazaChocolate) on Twitter, and tweet to both of us about the giveaway, then come back and leave me a second comment letting me know you tweeted. The giveaway will close at midnight on Tuesday the 5th, at which point I’ll randomly choose a winner. Open to U.S. readers only. If the winner doesn’t respond to me within 48 hours of me notifying them they’ve won, I’ll have to pick an alternate winner

P.S. I LOVED reading all your comments about your most memorable Valentine’s Day on my last giveaway. It was so fun to hear all the stories!

Disclaimer: Taza is hosting this giveaway, but I discovered the product myself and truly love it, and have not been compensated in any way for writing this post.

Mayan Chocolate Mousse

Adapted from Bon Appetit and inspired by Food & Wine. Serves 4.

Note: Chocolate Mousse can be a little bit finicky – I accidentally scrambled my first batch of egg yolks! – so carefully follow the instructions provided and make sure your ingredients are at the correct temperatures. If you mess up, don’t fret – the end result will be worth trying again!

• 3/4 c. chilled heavy whipping cream, divided
• pinch cream of tartar
• 2 egg whites, room temperature
• 4 TBS sugar, divided
• 4 egg yolks
• 1/4 c. strong cinnamon tea, at room temperature
• 1/8 tsp salt
• 2 packages of cinnamon Taza chocolate, or 5.4 oz. dark chocolate, finely chopped
• 1/8 tsp cayenne chili powder
• 1/8 tsp allspice
• 1/4 tsp cinnamon if using regular chocolate + 1/4 tsp cinnamon for whipped cream

1. Measure out 1/2 c. of the heavy cream into a medium bowl. Whisk vigorously until foamy, sprinkle with the cream of tartar, then whisk until stiff peaks firm. Cover and chill.
2. Beat egg whites vigorously until soft peaks form. Sprinkle 1 TBS of the sugar over the top, and continue beating until stiff, shiny peaks form. Set aside.
3. Bring a large pot of water to a gentle simmer. In a medium metal bowl, or a smaller metal-bottomed pot, whisk together the egg yolks, 2 TBS of the remaining sugar, room temperature tea, and salt. Set the bowl over the simmering water and whisk vigorously until mixture is pale yellow in color and doubled in volume. This will only take about a minute – remove immediately when it’s ready (or a second before you think it’s ready, as this is where it’s easy to accidentally scramble your eggs). Add the finely chopped chocolate and stir until it’s melted. If chocolate is not melting, it’s OK to set back over the simmering water for intervals of 5-10 seconds while whisking the mixture, but finely chopping the chocolate should remove the need for this. Once chocolate is melted, add the cayenne, allspice and 1/4 tsp cinnamon (if not using cinnamon chocolate) and whisk to incorporate. Let cool to room temperature.
4. Fold the egg whites into the chocolate mixture in two additions, only folding until just incorporated. Fold in the whipped cream until just incorporated. Divide between four dishes and chill for at least 1 hour.
5. Just before serving, beat remaining 1/4 c. of heavy cream and 1/4 tsp cinnamon until soft peaks form. Sprinkle with remaining 1 TBS of sugar and whisk to incorporate. Dollop a bit of whipped cream on top of each portion, and serve.

The post Taza Chocolate Giveaway and Mayan Chocolate Mousse appeared first on Katie at the Kitchen Door.